5.2 Rogue Trinkets

[EtanMoonstar]

I'm still trying to figure out if I'm relieved or disappointed that my two pre-heroic bis trinkets come from last tier (hell, MSV even) and by spending valor points after a mere one week's worth of rep gain with Shado-Pan Assault. GG last-minute decision to make Slice and Dice not affect RPPM. =P

[Zebrix]

Feral Cats are in the same boat as you Rogues. RPPM trinkets, even at heroic, don't beat out Vicious Talisman + heroic double-upped Bottle. Or at least that's the simcraft results I saw posted. Sad sad times.

I'm not sure how Hunters pick their trinkets. I've read some pretty conflicting reports. Some people list heroic Talisman of Bloodlust + Heroic Bad Juju as the bis trinkets but it looked like they did that just based on item levels. Others have posted sim results that indicate that the Vicious Talisman + heroic double-upped Terror in the mists remains BiS for BeastMasters. Either way I haven't got a clue. One of our hunters should probably post about it so we know who's got a hard-on for which trinket.

For Enhance Shams, it's very very decisively Talisman of Bloodlust + Bad Juju even in normal modes. You have to stack the ever-living shit out of your haste, and it also basically locks you into taking Ancestral Swiftness as your Tier 4 talent, but in the end you can push the buff uptime to outrageous levels. In tier 15 gear, with something like 13k Haste Rating on unbuffed gear, you're looking at a 1.5x multiplier from Flurry and another 10% passive haste from AS talent before any raid buffs kick in. Ironically, Talisman of Bloodlust also scales with itself because the stacking haste will drive its own RPPM up. You end up with upwards of 40% uptime on Bad Juju as a result of this.

Primal Elementalist talent also got buffed this patch, and the fire elemental benefits the most from haste. You end up with a situation where your elemental cooldown (glyphed) starts amounting to literally a quarter of your entire DPS. Unfortunately, Simcraft is still ranking Enhancement at like middle-of-the-pack and even closer to the bottom in Tier 15 gear but their hardcoded ability priorities are broken as fuck given the talent changes in 5.2. When they get around to fixing that permanently, pretty sure Enhance is gonna start ranking pretty high up.

[Toma]

There are actually 2 rogues aside from him actively raiding at the moment. The forever-rubberbanding rogue numbers continue to...do that.

And then there's me, who actively reads up on this junk to -try- to stay current, despite not playing.

Fax, what do you think about the way they're playing with the proc rates for agi trinkets? Think it'll affect any of your numbers currently?

[EtanMoonstar]

The latest numbers take into account the recent tweak to the Agi trinkets; the change didn't actually alter the theoretical uptime, as it turned out, it simply made it more statistically likely to avoid unlucky streaks without proccing that people had been having. They would have to DRAMATICALLY boost the RPPM frequency numbers (or allow attack speed increases like Slice and Dice to affect the RPPM frequency, like it was on PTR) for anything using RPPM to work as well for non-haste-stacking specs as non-RPPM trinkets do. The SP trinket and the Bottle, notice, both do not use RPPM.

Basically, Blizzard was trying to create something less predictable than the ICD system (where you could reliably count on your trinket proccing pretty darned close to the expiration of the ICD), and managed to create an utterly underwhelming mess for most people. I'm sure somewhere GC is continuing to curse rogues for being so "mathy" heh.

[Zebrix]

and managed to create an utterly underwhelming mess for most people.

Speak for yourself. I'm honestly pretty happy with Talisman of Bloodlust + Bad Juju combo... >.>

I kid. I kid. It's pretty shitty design.

I think this wouldn't be such a big deal if there were non-RPPM alternatives in the zone. It would actually be pretty nice to have the diversity, because there are a LOT of Agility classes and the competition on these items really desperately need to be thinned out.

[EtanMoonstar]

Heh, the competition on these items has definitely been thinned out, from what I've seen....

[Zebrix]

Heh, the competition on these items has definitely been thinned out, from what I've seen....

Well yeah, but not by giving YOU guys alternatives.

[EtanMoonstar]

So much fucking math today....

So, while intuitively the bad luck protection would not have seemed to alter the RPPM proc rate, in practice the removal of extreme cases of bad luck shifted the probability distribution curve in such a way that the real proc rate was buffed by around 13% (trust me, you don't want to see the proof of this--I had to muddle my way through it pretty slowly). Reranking the trinkets accounting for the new distribution results in the following (for Assassination stat weights/weapon speeds--fuck if I'm going through this work for Combat for the next little bit):

HTF Bloodlust: between 7433.381 and 7529.822
HTF Bad Juju: 7367.905
HTF Renataki: 7194.572
H Bloodlust: 7075.96
Shado-Pan: 7040.745
H Bad Juju: 6968.758
H Renataki: 6802.297
TF Bloodlust: 6626.184
TF Bad Juju: 6526.939
TF Renataki: 6372.428
Bloodlust: 6266.074
2/2 H Bottle: 6262.057
Bad Juju: 6171.651
Renataki: 6024.134
HTF Rune: 5843.575
H Rune: 5790.072
TF Rune: 5728.884
2/2 H Terror: 5715.211
Rune: 5677.508

Whee competition for the Bloodlust trinket, which I know Combat's going to want too! And yes, the theme of "buy your damn Valor trinket" continues.

[Zebrix]

What you posted is very similar to my trinket priority, with the caveat that the both the 2/2 H Bottle and the Shado-Pan trinket rank below normal mode Bad Juju (better than Renataki though) and I believe the 2/2H Terror isn't as good as the Rune (because hurr durr crit blows).

I was briefly happy there that I didn't have to fight with you three rogues for my trinkets. Why did you have to go and ruin my fun here?

[EtanMoonstar]

It makes sense, Zeb; if Slice and Dice affected our RPPM rates, I imagine our trinket lists would look even more similar.